Karen Whiteside, 46, was convicted Friday on a felony count of issuing worthless checks and pleaded guilty on Monday to an additional misdemeanor charge. St. Tammany Parish Judge Allison Penzato sentenced her Monday to five years in prison -- four to run concurrently with her current prison sentence and one to run consecutively.

The charges, filed just days after her previous conviction, are thought to be the last in Whiteside's white-collar crime spree that spanned two parishes for more than a decade.

In October 1998, one month after she was hired as the assistant to the director of Covington's downtown development department, Whiteside pleaded guilty to stealing $26,488 from Mentz Construction Services in Jefferson Parish. She received five years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution.

Meanwhile, Covington officials had no idea she'd been charged and convicted. The department's director, Candace Watkins, who would later become mayor, gave her a recommendation for a better-paying job at a Covington business.

Whiteside returned to the city as planning assistant and building permit clerk in February 2004. The next year, she started serving as events coordinator for the annual nonprofit Three Rivers Arts Festival. In 2007, the festival became suspicious that she'd stolen from their rainy-day fund and did not renew her contract.

Still, she was promoted to the city's administration office manager in 2007 and began managing the city's utilities billing less than a year later. After the city started asking questions, she resigned via email while on vacation.

The Covington Police Department discovered she'd bilked almost $50,000 from the festival, passed around $1,200 in bad checks and charged more than $200 on the city's credit card at auto parts and home improvement stores.

In March, a St. Tammany Parish jury found her guilty of passing $600 in worthless checks. Two months later, she pleaded guilty to theft charges, injuring public records and a number of other worthless check charges.

Penzato determined Whiteside to be a repeat offender and sentenced her to serve 10 years in prison and pay restitution to the city and the festival.

The new crop of bad checks, written from Whiteside's empty bank account and issued to local businesses and organizations, surfaced shortly after the previous conviction.